Monday -
Battle of Britain Results - Germany decided to focus on attacking British ships and ports and thus stopped attacking cities.
German Invasion of USSR - June, 1941. Went extremely well for Germany until the winter set in.
Scorch Earth Policy - Stalin demanded this of the Soviet troops as they retreated so Germany can't use anything.
Tuesday -
Battle for Moscow - The Soviet Winter Counteroffensive December 6, 1941 - April 30, 1942. The Russian winter sets in and is a major turning point in the war. Once Germany did not win Moscow they could not win.
Battle of Stalingrad - August 1942-February 1943. 1,011,500 men in the German Army and 1,000,500 men in the Russian army. Soviet victory and there were 1,830,000 killed or wounded. The biggest defeat in the history of the German army.
Siege of Leningrad - August 30, 1941, the Germans took over Leningrad's railroads, cutting them off from the rest of Russia and the world. Unlike the battle of Stalingrad, the Germans surrounded the city to starve the city into submission. Between November 1941 and October 1942, 641,000 people died of starvation. People resorted to cannibalism, eating rats, wall paper paste. A successful Russian counter-offensive at Stalingrad forced the Germans to move there and the siege failed. The Germans never took Leningrad, but it was one of the most costly conflicts Russia had ever faced-over one million died.
Wednesday -
The North Africa Campaign - June, 1940 to May 1943. General Bernard Montgomery (British), and General Erwin Rommel - The Desert Fox (German). Vichy French, Germany, and Italy controlled Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya.
Operation Torch - In November, 1942 the US and British invade North Africa. By May, 1943, Axis forces surrendered in North Africa. The campaign then shifted to the Mediterranean islands and Italy. Allies plan to assault on weakest axis area. George S. Patton leads American troops. Germans trapped in Tunisia - surrender over 275,000 troops.
Italian Campaign - Operation Avalanche - Invaded Sicily first, June 1943 and Italy was invaded later in 1943. Rome surrenders on June 5, 1944. Germans still controlled Italy until February, 1945.
Atlantic Wall - The Nazis had built a wall of mines, barbed wire, pillboxes, concrete bunkers, cliffs that are hundreds of feet tall, and other things. Went from Norway to Spain.
D-Day - General Eisenhower gives the order for Operation Overlord. June 6, 1944, and Germany surrendered in May of 1945. Americans sent misinformation to Hitler and he believed that we would attack a French city that is the closest to Great Britain.
June 20,1944 - Assassination plot to kill Hitler. He was at a meeting with Major Claus von Stauffenberg. He brought a briefcase with a bomb into the meeting with Hitler.
Liberation of Paris - August 25, 1944. Charles De Gaulle.
The Battle of the Bulge - December, 1944 to January, 1945. Hitler's last offensive. They made a major push to move the Allies to the sea.
United States and Russian Soldiers Meet at the Elbe River - On April 25, 1945 Soviet and American soldiers meet as Germany is taken down. Winston Churchill said that the Soviet Union would be dangerous after the war. Hitler commits suicide on April 30, 1945 at the Fuhrer's Bunker.
V-E Day - Germany surrenders on May 8, 1945.
Thursday -
Holocaust - The genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II. A program of systematic state-sponsored extermination by Nazi Germany throughout Nazi-occupied territory. Approximately two-thirds of the population of nine million Jews who had lived in Europe before the Holocaust. The number of Holocaust victims would be 11 million and 17 million people.
Genocide - Killing of people targeting a certain group. Could be severely harming. Deliberately inflicting on the conditions of the group. Imposing measures to prevent births within the group. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Aryan Race - The term that the Nazi's used to refer to a "master" race that originated around Germany. Perfect Aryan was blonde, blue-eyed, tall and muscular. The original term refers to people speaking an Indoeuropean dialect.
Targets - Jews (6,000,000), Gypsies (500,000 to 1,500,000), Mentally/physically handicapped people (75,000 - 250,000), Poles (2,500,000), Homosexuals (5,000 - 15,000), Communists/socialists (many were killed but not an official number), Dark skinned people (death and forced sterilization), Jehovah's Witness (2,500 - 5,000)
Soviet Slavs/POW's/Troops - 16,500,000 Russians were killed by Germany. At German hands, 13,700,000 people died.
Lebensborn-Fount of Life - The program aimed to promote the growth of superior Aryan populations by providing excellent health care and living conditions to women and by restricting access to those deemed "fit". Houses were set up throughout Germany. Many children were born to unwed mothers which lead to rumors of rape.
Hitler's Jewish Question - Nazis temporarily suspended civil liberties for all citizens in 1933-Never restored. The first concentration camp was set up at Dachau in 1933. The first inmates were 200 communists. Jews are prohibited from working as civil servants, doctors in the National Health Service, and teachers in public high school. Most Jewish students were banned from public high schools and colleges.
Nuremburg Laws (1935)- Took away German citizenship from Jews thus making Jews second class citizens by removing their basic right. If one of your grandparents was Jewish you could be put in a concentration camp. Jews could only marry Jews.
1936 - Germans boycotted Jewish-owned businesses.
Kristallnacht (1938) - November 9, and 10 the Nazis roamed through Jewish neighborhoods breaking windows of Jewish businesses and homes, burning synagogues (101). 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. 26,000 Jews were arrested and taken to camps. 91 Jews died.
Friday -
1938 - All Jewish children were kicked out from public schools in Germany and Austria. Nazis take control of Jewish-owned businesses.
1939 - Hitler orders the systematic murder of the mentally and physically disabled in Germany and Austria. Jews are required to wear armbands or yellow stars.
1940 - Nazis began deporting German Jews to Poland. Jews would be forced to ghettos. Nazis began the first mass murder of Jews in Poland.
1941 - Jews throughout Eastern Europe are forced into ghettos. In two days, German units shoot 33,771 Ukrainian Jews at BabiYar - the largest single massacre of the Holocaust. The death camp at Chelmno in Poland begins murdering Jews.
1942 - Nazi officials announce their plan to kill all European Jews. Five death camps begin operation in Poland - Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Belzec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Ghettos of Eastern Europe are being emptied as thousands of Jews are shipped to death camps.
1943 - Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto resist as the Nazis begin new rounds of deportations. These Jews hold out for nearly a month before the Nazis put down the uprising.
1944 - Hitler takes over Hungary and begins deporting 12,000 Hungarian Jews each day to Auschwitz where they are murdered.
1945 - Hitler is defeated and WWII ends in Europe. The Holocaust is over and the death camps are found and emptied. Many survivors are placed in displaced persons camps until they find a country willing to help them.
1946 - 850,000 people lived in displaced persons camps across Europe. Armenians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians, Yugoslavs, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Ukrainians, and Czechoslovakians.
1947 - The United Nations establish establishes a Jewish homeland in British controlled Palestine, which becomes the State of Israel in 1948.
Italy - Benito Mussolini - Il Duce. The first of the WWII dictators to rise to power.
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